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Silver, who is due to take up the post of NBA commissioner in February of next year 2014, wants to use the web to introduce the game to sports hungry Chinese.
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NBA Commissioner David Stern and the next NBA Commissioner Adam Silver/ Getty
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Adam Silver can best be described as a man in waiting, having been officially endorsed by the incumbent chairman David Stern to be handed the post of NBA commissioner when Stern steps down from his post at the end of January 2014. Silver was the most natural candidate for the job having acted as deputy commissioner and chief operating officer of the National Basketball Association since July 2006.
Silver has obviously not been letting the grass grow under his feet (or should that be the parquet) when he announced that he is already in an advanced stage of negotiations with the Sina Corporporation owners of the Weibo micro blogging service.
Weibo are regarded as being the closest equivalent in China to Twitter, and according to Silver, currently there at least 60 million Chinese following the sport through their service.
Sina has been the NBA’s official Internet partner in China since 2010, but until now live games have been few and far between. However once the new arrangement gets under way, Weibo will have their own reporters covering the games for each of the thirty teams competing in the NBA as well as producing a roundup show featuring updates on all the latest news on the NBA and its players. Initially the show will be streamed weekly, but according to Silver, if interest is as fervent as is expected, the coverage could increase considerably as well as the number of viewers.
Aware as many of the increasing impact of mobile technology in sports broadcasting, Silver has already indicated to NBA employees that they should begin to embrace the technology and the dramatic effects that it can have on the spread of interest in basketball in general and the NBA in particular.
Adam Silver was born and raised in Westchester County, to the north of New York City
Silver graduated from Duke University in 1984 going on to be awarded a degree in law degree from the University of Chicago in 1988.
After graduation, Silver worked as a litigation associate at the law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore, based in New York, later going on to serve as a law clerk to Judge Kimba Wood, who presided at the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Silver left the legal profession to be begin working for the NBA in 1992. Before taking up the role of assistant commissioner in 2006, Silver held the positions of special assistant to the commissioner, chief of staff as well as senior vice president of NBA Entertainment before being promoted to president of the NBA.
In appreciation of his efforts in advancing global interest in the NBA, Silver’s name was added to the TIME Magazine and CNN’s list of Global Business Influential. In addition, Adam Silver has featured on a number of occasions on the Sporting News’s “100 Most Powerful People in Sports”
